


Kingsman: A Rendezvous Of Pertinence

by Aud_McCartney



Series: KingsSHIELD [3]
Category: Kingsman (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Gentleman Harry Hart, Negotiations, Pre-Iron Man 1, Prequel, Protective Harry Hart, Sneaky Nick Fury, nobody's surprised by Fury just popping up in places anymore anyway, so the whole character-tagging process kinda steps on the surprise reveal but whatever, turn around he's behind you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:54:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26642548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aud_McCartney/pseuds/Aud_McCartney
Summary: Once or twice in a lifetime, even a ‘much bigger universe’ needs some fine-tuning in beta.
Relationships: Nick Fury & Harry Hart | Galahad
Series: KingsSHIELD [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1038444
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Kingsman: A Rendezvous Of Pertinence

—KENSINGTON, SOUTH LONDON—

—SEPTEMBER 2007—

Harry Hart has had an absolute _eternity_ of a day. And it isn’t through with him yet, either.

“You know I don’t give a damn.”

He’s talking to Merlin, his civilian cell phone wedged between his shoulder and ear, given that he’s also strolling southbound down Gloucester Road in broad daylight. Carrying on a conversation via his glasses, without a visible Bluetooth piece, would no doubt have his fellow pedestrians convinced he should be shuttled off to the nearest inpatient psychiatric hospital. Not to say he doesn’t miss the convenience. He trades his personal effects between hands.

“I’d be happy to tell you what Arthur can go and do with himself, but I have neighbors within earshot. Lovely evening, Mrs. Pendleton.” He lifts a companionable hand at the passing septuagenarian as she gets into her car, then takes the crosswalk. “Nevermind that you should know by now. Why you haven’t passed on the message without my involvement is beyond me.”

Merlin replies, and Harry half-listens. At this stage, all he wants is to be home and have his supper. Quite often, his lengthier days leave him inspired to cook his own meal as a means of decompression, but this is not one of those days, which explains the paper sack from Byron off Cromwell swinging from his left hand, taunting him with the promise of a fat hamburger in his immediate future. He never claimed to have shed the cravings of his half-American childhood entirely—not that he’d ever admit that in certain company. Say, obnoxious prodigal billionaire company. He’d never hear the end of it.

“I’ll see to it in the morning, then. Eight o’clock, yes.” Harry fishes in his pocket for his house key, veering up the path of 11 Stanhope Mews South, SW7. “I’ll tell him myself. That should make a sorry breakfast more interesting—of course it isn’t what you meant. I’m ignoring you. I assumed that went without saying.”

As his key turns in the bolt, Harry’s mind whirs down into slow-motion, his peripheral vision spinning conscious calculations of subconscious minutiae. Little things. Faint scratches on the metal faceplate, for example, just around the keyhole, impossible to see without his glasses’ enhancement. The least degree of difference in the angle of his welcome mat. A scattering of leaves he’d spotted on the stoop this morning, now missing on a windless day. 

It dawns on him to draw the conclusion only an agent of his years would ever suspect. The fine hair at the back of his neck rises skyward, like his guard, and his heartrate.

His front door has been disturbed more than once today.

“Merlin, stand by,” he says, suddenly hushed and urgent. “There’s someone in my house.”

Harry mutes the other line, dropping his phone into his pocket. If Merlin has any words of protest, and he always does, he can tell them to double-stitched wool. There are more important priorities at the moment.

It won’t draw his neighbors’ suspicions that his right hand wraps securely around the hilt of his umbrella. There’s nothing to see as his left one slowly works the door handle, supper in tow. Just a tailor returning home. A tailor whose umbrella rises to his shoulder like a rifle, the canopy expanding in silence, as the door shuts softly behind him. He gives away no sign of life, not the faintest sound of breath nor crinkle of paper, stone still as the display blinks to the ready.

He pivots slowly, collecting an infrared scan of his own home. If there’s anyone still here, he’ll have the bastards collecting their teeth from the baseboard before they know what’s hit them. The sitting room is clear. The staircase to his bedroom. No one in the toilet, either.

Nothing whatsoever—until the glowing, static red figure seated casually at his dining room table.

“I hear it’s bad luck to pop one of those bad boys indoors,” comes the voice of a man.

Lucky for that man, it’s a voice Harry has very much heard before.

Deflating somewhat, he mentally de-escalates, collapsing his weapon of choice, resting it in the holder near the door. There won’t be a fight, and yet somehow, that isn’t exactly a relief.

“Only if you’re on the far end,” Harry returns.

Rounding the wall, he finds the man himself, clad in all black, as always—and looking awfully comfortable in his home, for someone who wasn’t invited. One of several reasons why Harry’s next words aren’t to him. He plucks the civilian phone out of his pocket again, attention pointedly trained on his unexpected guest while deliberately discussing him as if he isn’t there.

“Stand down, Merlin. It’s only an ambush in the professional sense. Apparently SHIELD’s infiltration protocols leave something to be desired…yes, unfortunate, I agree. Mother had them all up to scratch at this, at one point.”

A flat look snaps onto the benign intruder’s face as Harry terminates the call. Judging by it, he isn’t amused, which is another pity, because Harry rather enjoyed himself with that one, in all honesty. The absence of an open phone line must be the cue to speak that his visitor was waiting for. When it ends, he begins.

“Did it occur to you that I _wanted_ you to know I was here, Agent Galahad?”

Of course it did. He wasn’t born yesterday. “Did it occur to you that I prefer to spend my evenings alone?”

“That makes two of us.”

He deposits the fast food sack on the sideboard, setting aside his disappointment along with it. The thought of a perfectly good hamburger bastardized, microwaved in its own congealed grease, is about as appealing as a fresh shit from Mr. Pickle. “I assume you know it would have been much less difficult to arrange a meet elsewhere than to bypass my security, infiltrate my home, and risk my shooting you without question.”

The figure rises from his seat to full height. “You’re not the first spy I’ve paid a housecall to.”

“No, I wouldn’t have imagined I was.”

“And you didn’t shoot.” Without even a glance down, he glides the dining chair back into place, to the millimeter, as if it’d never been moved. “Looks like it worked out to me.”

Harry turns to his drink cart and takes two glasses, popping a decanter. May as well skip the pretense with these sorts of things. “Always a pleasure, Director Fury. What will you have?”

“Gin, if you’ve got it.”

“A gentleman is never unprepared for company.”

He pours generously, taking one over and handing it off to Nick, who thanks him with a bob of the head, then takes an appreciative sip in the pause before he asks his first deliberate question.

“Do you know why I’m here?”

Harry has the vaguest feeling, owed to his faithful Sunday conversations with the women who raised him. Mother has been alluding to new developments in the early stages. One ambitious rumor in particular. He swallows his own sip thoughtfully, still holding the reigns of the whole interaction as he returns Nick Fury’s gaze, coolly immovable. Even nonchalant.

“Do you know why you shouldn’t be?”

That’s a yes. And Fury correctly takes it as one. Since there’s no need to explain the matter he came to discuss, he moves straight on into the pitch. Haggling for his ends. The shift on his face is unmistakable before he even speaks. No spy can hide a damn thing from another.

“Kingsman is the oldest independent intelligence organization on the planet,” he begins.

“I know what we are,” Harry replies, not defensive in the least. It’s fact; there’s no need.

“And _you_ are Kingsman’s most capable. Don’t tell me you’re not.”

“I have no reason to lie to you, Director.”

“Then we’re on the same page. That makes you England’s best of the best, and the only agent in the western world who has skills on par with the Black Widow. You are your mother for the modern age…but just a little more ruthless.”

Harry lightly swirls his liquor, folding one arm under the other. “My mother had to be ruthless in heels, and under the scrutiny of men. I can imagine it would’ve been prohibitive.” At least to the grislier parts of the job. It’s hard to picture his mother impaling a man with his own exhaust pipe.

But Fury did not traverse the Atlantic to reminisce on his retired predecessor. His lone eye is focused with the deadly precision of two. Unmovable. Every facet of his presence radiates how rarely he takes ‘no’ for an answer. Quite imposing, to some, and for good reason.

“We could use you,” he says.

Tens of thousands of worldwide intelligence agents would fling themselves from the Taipei 101 to hear those words from a leader like Nicholas J. Fury. They aren’t easily given; Harry knows that. They’re earned. It isn’t news to hear he’s earned them, either. The wall in his study had its suspicions, for one thing. And he was taught from a very young age to know his worth. He always has. None of that makes the proposal any less of an honor.

The trouble is, there’s another code of honor in his life. One that indisputably got to him first.

For the less-worldly, this would be the awkward part. Harry inhales deeply, exhaling in a sigh, and takes up a conciliatory tone, the sort that might help to ease a breakup. One you hope goes smoothly, with no ill will. The drawback of his particular expertise, he supposes.

“I’m happy to continue to liaise with SHIELD whenever you need my assistance,” he offers. “Otherwise, I’ve been over this before, I’m afraid. SHIELD is my mother’s legacy. Not mine.”

The counter comes quickly. “I’m not talking about an agency position.”

“No. What you’re talking about is a classified SHIELD initiative.”

“Of heroes,” Fury clarifies. “A team of highly-skilled public defenders who work above the rank and limitations of a field agent, for deployment only in the most extreme circumstances. It’s being called the Avenger Initiative.”

Harry peaks an eyebrow. An admirable concept, if arbitrary. SHIELD could have a mess on their hands whether they succeed or fail. “A rather longwinded way of saying you’re assembling a tactical team of spies.”

“Not just spies. The idea is to combine the skills of…extraordinary individuals. Intelligence is only one of the pools we’re fishing from. We’re also looking very seriously at the possibility of enhanced combatants.”

Now his brow gathers in the middle. That’s a detail he hadn’t anticipated hearing. It doesn’t take much to put two and two together; certainly not for someone whose mothers read them to sleep with tales of heroes as a young boy. Who always picked the same hero, every single night, and was enthralled for far longer than most children believe in heroes in the first place.

“You’re saying you intend to replicate Captain America.”

Fury semi-committally nods. “You’re not wrong. I’ve got another Captain in mind, myself, but circumstances considered, we’re prepared to stack the deck with everything at our disposal. Let’s just say super-soldiers aren’t out of the question.”

“And you find it wise to proceed without Howard Stark.”

“The Ferris wheel keeps turning even when the big men get off, Agent Hart. It wouldn’t hurt to make the ride a little more stable.”

Harry isn’t in the right career to argue with that. It’s a fair point. And whether or not they create their own calamity by fucking with untested science frankly isn’t his problem. All he can do is hope that it doesn’t become the whole world’s.

“By the way,” Fury interjects in his thoughts. “Don’t suppose you’ve got any idea where to find the heir apparent.”

The question makes Harry smirk slightly into his drink as he raises it again, contemplating the color. There’s always a certain fondness in being asked about Tony. Especially by the uninitiated. Poor man.

“If you haven’t tried Caesar’s Palace, I’d imagine that would be a place to start.”

“Don’t you two talk?”

“Now and then, only when I foil his escape.”

“What do you think the odds are he’d be willing to develop for our tech department?”

If that doesn’t justify bluntness, nothing does. “Miserable. You can’t afford him.”

It's Fury’s turn to pull an eyebrow hop. He visibly dismisses the sidebar and moves swiftly off the subject of Tony Stark, back to the matter at hand: trying to land the whale he actually wants. Apparently, quite badly.

“Can we afford _you?_ ”

It’s flattering, it truly is. Extraordinarily so. That’s why a slim smile stays stationed on Harry’s face, halfheartedly restrained, even as he sticks to his guns. “Thank you, but I’m paid sufficiently where I am, Director. The money is irrelevant.”

“You’d be a hero. A _recognized_ hero, for a change.”

“I’m perfectly content with anonymity. I can still go to the shops at dinner hour.”

It’s evident in Fury’s sigh that his patience is not only finite, but actively diminishing. His head slants toward one shoulder, eye narrowing sharply. “Can I be frank, Agent?”

“Please, by all means.”

He lifts and drops his arms at their surroundings. “What the fuck is it that’s keepin’ you here? The sad-ass bachelor pad? You got a goddamn dead dog in the bathroom.”

With less formality and another gin, the shallow breath Harry expels might have been a proper laugh. “I’m impressed. In all these years, I’ve never known you for the profane type.”

“In all these years, we’ve primarily crossed paths at your mothers’ fundraisers, in the company of diplomats and generals. Test me and you’d be surprised.”

“Not as much as you’d think.”

Then again, it isn’t Fury’s choice of phrase that has any sway over things at the moment. It’s his own. Harry sets his sights elsewhere for a count of five or so, gathering the words he needs. When he meets his houseguest’s eye again, it’s with nothing less than grounded, utter confidence. Rooted in everything that means anything to him in the world.

“I love my job, Director. I save lives every day. I see my closest friend as often as I like, and I benefit from his expertise; I seem blessed to know more than one genius… I adore London. I have since my mother first brought me for summer vacations when I was a child. It’s my home.”

“Then what if I told you we can base you in London? No move. You’d be on call.”

Relentless. “I would still say no.”

“I assume I don’t get to ask why,” Fury cross-examines.

“No. You don’t. But I get to decide whether to tell you.”

This is the part where Harry sets aside his beverage, because this is the part that makes him sure of his answer beyond any doubt, beyond every shred of temptation that any living soul could ever dangle. He lifts his chin slightly, his stature as steady and firm as the intonation in his voice.

“Ten years ago, an error I made left a child fatherless. That child is now nearly fifteen, and lives in the estates here in London. What you would call the projects. I watch over him, from afar. I may not know what goes on in his home life, I don’t break the law or intrude on his privacy, but I monitor his public record, and I keep him from significant harm out in the world. And I wait. Until the day he needs my help. _That_ is my responsibility. I’m more flattered by your offer than you could know. But I have no intention of abandoning the boy to chance. Now, or ever.”

It’s the most meaningful confession he’s ever made to an acquaintance in his life. The way it settles over the room, it shows.

Fury takes such a deep breath that it seems to straighten his spine, his eye fastened on Harry to the end, mouth pressed flat. Finally, after evaluating him long enough, the moment comes when he hits the wall of that immovable certainty, and resignation settles on his face. He nods twice.

“I see.”

About damned time. Apart from a projectile in the neck, he’d nearly run out of dissuasion ideas. It’s for the best. “I’m sorry you came all this way, Director. If it’s any consolation, I’m sure your team will turn out brilliantly without me.”

“Here’s hoping.” It’s a minor ego boost that he sounds a hair less confident than usual. Fury sets down his glass on the table, certainly not the type to stay for a chat when business is through. “Thanks for the drink.”

“My pleasure.”

“If it’s no trouble, give your mother my best. I can see myself out.”

“Yes, of course.”

One would think that would be the end of that. But it isn’t. Nick’s just past the dining room archway when he stops, turning partly back around, hesitating to leave. He sends Harry a glance over his shoulder that comes off both amused, and fucking baffled by the unfathomability.

“You sure? For a kid who doesn’t know who the hell you are?”

Harry smiles privately to himself. Both in sadness and an odd sort of pride, neither of which will ever go away.

“Positive,” he tells the director. “In the absence of a father, he’ll just have to make do with a guardian angel.”

Even Nick Fury has to crack half a grin at that image. “Pretty badass guardian angel. I’d hate to see what half that shit of yours would do to George Bailey.”

In return, Harry smirks to high hell. “So would George Bailey.”

Fury chuckles under his breath, then disappears. Harry hears the door lock securely in his wake, not bothering to question how he managed to work the mechanism from the outside. Men of their skill have their ways.

In all that, he’d almost forgotten his meal. Gone cold now, he’s sure. Shaking his head, he collects his consolation prize from the sideboard, and starts toward the kitchen for a plate, marveling not for the first time at the trajectory of his life. The sorts of things that end up on his doorstep, keeping him from eating and catching in his brain.

The Avenger Initiative. It’s hardly probable, but he hopes the best for the whole idea. He genuinely does.


End file.
